old friends, new friends, visitors and work...........

Hi everyone,

Its been a long time since my last blog but that is not because I have been lying idle!  Its been an extremely busy few weeks with visitors and work!  I had the pleasure of entertaining four lovely ladies from Myres Park in USA who were visiting the Synod.  I had them for lunch at my house and I felt as though I were with old friends.  It was great!

Then I had another visitor this time from Northern Ireland - her name is Joy Ryan and she was passing through Mzuzu and so I was able to provide accommodation for an evening.  It was such a joy when three other Pastors turned up later in the evening, and one of them was Rev Francis Matumba from the Anglican Church and he had been a student at Zomba Theological College.  We had a lot of chat to catch up on.

Rev Francis Matumba

Meanwhile work was continuing through all of these visitors and we had a workshop with four of our trainers to empower them to be supervisors for one of our training programmes.  We had Khwima from Euthini, Prescott from Chitipa, Daniel from Embangweni and Madalitso from Ekwendeni.  We chose them because they are in strategic places within the synod for supervision purposes.  It was a great time of fun and learning together.

Khwima, Prescott, Daniel and Madalitso

myself in action

Nicolas

Khwima giving a presentation

During the workshop, we discussed using locally available materials as play materials.  It was so exciting to see the gourds and seed pods which the participants brought to be used in our ECD centres.

It was during this workshop that I had another visitor for a couple of days, someone that people in Ireland will know well - Rev. Uel Marrs.  It was a pleasure for me to be able to show him one of our workshops as well as our CCAP International Pre-school and our new school building.  I hope Uel enjoyed the visit as much as I did!

In a previous post, I discussed workshops that we were doing with the Private Early Childhood Centres in Mzuzu.  The final one for this year was in November - we had a great time of discussion and learning together, and I hope that we see great things happening in our private centres.

Enala facilitating

one of the caregivers children - isn't he cute!

I also mentioned training the group from Nkhata Bay in a recent blog, where the World Bank have been doing a pilot study in Malawi in four districts.  Last week I was invited to a meeting in Lilongwe to review this study.  I was supposed to arrive on Wednesday night which means leaving at lunchtime on Wednesday.  However, there was no fuel in town (a common occurrence these days).  Thanks to one of our drivers I managed to find enough fuel to get to the meeting.  Well, imagine the pleasant surprise when I arrived in my lodge in Lilongwe to find an enormous room with a bathroom, bedroom and kitchen complete with flat screen TV and a computer in the room.  For those of you in first world countries this is probably standard but believe me this was a real treat for me!

After the meeting, I stayed another night intending to go home on Friday morning.  However, guess what........there was no fuel in town.  Absolutely no petrol or diesel anywhere.  So I had to move out of my nice lodge into a much cheaper place while I searched for fuel.  Eventually I made it home on Saturday night having bought it on the black market - otherwise I might still be in Lilongwe.

The fuel situation is becoming worse.  On Friday I had a meeting here in Mzuzu and one participant was coming from Mzimba (about an hour and a half away).  The meeting was at 8am and she arrived about 1pm - the bus had run out of fuel on the way!  These days we expect higher prices in the shops because fuel is scarce and businesses are finding it difficult to cope.  Who knows where we are headed!

However, today I spent a lovely afternoon with my good friend Estie and Jenny, and the good thing was I was able to walk there - no fuel needed!

Jenny and Estie

Back to nature - by now you must realise my love for the outdoors.  Yesterday I had some children playing in the garden and we were removing lots of hornets nests which are being built all around the house.  We also came across this amazing spiders web which is about 1 1/2 metres wide and extremely strong.  Its a spider of the orb family - not sure which one but I would not like to get too close to it!!

Usually the brighter the colour the more dangerous the spider......... but it is beautiful!!

One of the hornets nests with a couple of small hornets on it - God's creation never fails to amaze me!

And today, as I was walking back from Esties, I passed this beautiful tree with purple and white flowers - such a glorious sight.  Last time I mentioned that we had had a few days of rains - grass is green again and plants are growing very fast due to the heat and humidity.  We have not had any more rain but lets hope it comes soon.  We need it not only for the vegetation, and to fill the dam, but to clear the air..........

On that note, let me wish you a blessed week,

Diane